Attitude of
Protestantism—­Recent Advocates of the Moral Necessity of
Prostitution—­(4) Civilizational Value as a Factor of Prostitution—­The
Influence of Urban Life—­The Craving for Excitement—­Why Servant-girls
so Often Turn to Prostitution—­The Small Part Played by
Seduction—­Prostitutes Come Largely from the Country—­The Appeal of
Civilization Attracts Women to Prostitution—­The Corresponding Attraction
Felt by Men—­The Prostitute as Artist and Leader of Fashion—­The Charm of
Vulgarity.

IV. The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution:—­The Decay of the
Brothel—­The Tendency to the Humanization of Prostitution—­The Monetary
Aspects of Prostitution—­The Geisha—­The Hetaira—­The Moral Revolt
Against Prostitution—­Squalid Vice Based on Luxurious Virtue—­The Ordinary
Attitude Towards Prostitutes—­Its Cruelty Absurd—­The Need of Reforming
Prostitution—­The Need of Reforming Marriage—­These These Two Needs
Closely Correlated—­The Dynamic Relationships Involved.

I.  The Orgy.

Traditional morality, religion, and established convention combine to promote not only the extreme of rigid abstinence but also that of reckless license.  They preach and idealize the one extreme; they drive those who cannot accept it to adopt the opposite extreme.  In the great ages of religion it even happens that the severity of the rule of abstinence is more or less deliberately tempered by the permission for occasional outbursts of license.  We thus have the orgy, which flourished in mediaeval days and is, indeed, in its largest sense, a universal manifestation, having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization, built up on natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable restraints.

The consideration of the orgy, it may be said, lifts us beyond the merely sexual sphere, into a higher and wider region which belongs to religion.  The Greek orgeia referred originally to ritual things done with a religious purpose, though later, when dances of Bacchanals and the like lost their sacred and inspiring character, the idea was fostered by Christianity that such things were immoral.[107] Yet Christianity was itself in its origin an orgy of the higher spiritual activities released from the uncongenial servitude of classic civilization, a great festival of the poor and the humble, of the slave and the sinner.  And when, with the necessity for orderly social organization, Christianity had ceased to be this it still recognized, as Paganism had done, the need for an occasional orgy.  It appears that in 743 at a Synod held in Hainault reference was made to the February debauch (de Spurcalibus in februario) as a pagan practice; yet it was precisely this pagan festival which was embodied in the accepted customs of the Christian Church as the chief orgy of the ecclesiastical year, the great Carnival prefixed to the long fast of Lent.  The celebration